Excel VBA: Display the Developer Toolbar or Ribbon

By default the developer toolbar or ribbon (depending on the Excel version) is hidden in Microsoft Excel. In Excel 2007 and later it can be quite tricky to figure out where to enable the developer ribbon if you don't know where to look. To make things even worse, in Excel 2010 they have changed the way of enabling the ribbon.

Excel 2016

To enable the developer tooolbar in Excel 2016 for Office 365, please have a look at Displaying the developer toolbar or ribbon in Excel.

Excel 2010

In Excel 2010 you can display the developer toolbar the following way:

1. Click the green File Button
2. Press Options
3. Make sure that the Customize Ribbon right menu item is selected.
4. In the dropdown list called Customize the Ribbon, select All Tabs.
5. In the group called Main Tabs, make sure that the option Developer is checked.

Excel 2007

To display the developer ribbon, do the following:

1. Click the Office Button
2. Click the Excel Options button at the bottom of the dialog.
3. Ensure that the Popular tab in the left menu is selected (se picture below)
4. Check the option Show Developer tab in the Ribbon

Excel 2003

In older versions of excel the developer ribbon is divided between two toolbars: Control Toolbox and Forms. The toolbars can be displayed the following way:

1. Press View on the main toolbar
2. Select Toolbars
3. Check the toolbar Control Toolbox
4. Check the toolbar Forms

 

Visual Studio 2010: Debug the .NET assemblies

The .NET framework is under heavy development and bugs are removed by Microsoft developers when found. However, you may still experience major bugs that might cause your application to crash. Sometimes it is even hard to determine whether it is a bug in your own code or in the framework. This issue has been taken to a new level in Visual Studio 2010. A feature, which by default is disabled in Visual Studio, enables you to debug the entire .NET source code directly within VS2010. Previously tools like .NET Reflector and ILSpy were required to identify any bugs in the .NET framework.

To enable .NET framework code debugging, please do the following:

Visual Studio 2019

To enable .NET framework code debugging in VS2019 please visit Debug the .net assemblies.

Visual Studio 2010

1) In Visual Studio 2010, select Debug -> Options and Settings...
The Options dialog is displayed.

2) Select Debugging in the left menu (se picture below) and check the option Enable .NET Framework source stepping.

When running your application in debug mode, Visual Studio will download the .NET source code when needed. Please be aware that the source code might use a lot of free space on your hard drive depending on how many .NET assemblies that are in use.

Excel VBA: Adding custom Button to the Toolbar or Ribbon

Custom buttons are added to the toolbars or ribbons when a Microsoft Excel sheet is opened, and removed when the sheet is closed. To be notified when a given Excel sheet is loaded we need to listen to the Workbook_Open event of the ThisWorkbook object found in the VBA Project explorer.
Please notice that the following code works best with Excel versions prior to Office 2007. If used in newer versions, from Excel 2007, the button and commandbar will be added to the "Add-Ins" tab. It is only possible to add buttons to the main ribbon using dynamic XML when using VBA. Se below for more information.

' ConstantsPrivate Const COMMANDBAR_NAME As String = "Custom Toolbar"Private Const BUTTON_CAPTION As String = "My Button"' OpenPrivate Sub Workbook_Open()
    ' Variables
    Dim objCommandBar As CommandBar
    Dim objButton As CommandBarButton

    ' Try to get the Commandbar (if it exists)
    On Error Resume Next
    Set objCommandBar = Me.CommandBars(COMMANDBAR_NAME)
    On Error GoTo 0
    
    ' Was the commandbar available?
    If (objCommandBar Is Nothing) Then
        ' Create the commandbar
        On Error Resume Next
        Set objCommandBar = Application.CommandBars.Add(Name:=COMMANDBAR_NAME, Position:=msoBarTop, Temporary:=True)
        On Error GoTo 0
        
        ' Valid commandbar?
        If (Not objCommandBar Is Nothing) Then
            ' Add the buttons to the command bar
            With objCommandBar
                ' Add button
                Set objButton = objCommandBar.Controls.Add(Type:=msoControlButton, Temporary:=True)
                
                 ' Set the button properties
                With objButton
                    .Style = msoButtonIconAndCaption
                    .Caption = BUTTON_CAPTION
                    .FaceId = 258
                    .TooltipText = "Do Something"
                    .OnAction = "'" & ThisWorkbook.Name & "'!OnDoSomething"
                End With
                
                ' Show the command bar
                .Visible = True
            End With
        End If
    End IfEnd Sub' Before ClosePrivate Sub Workbook_BeforeClose(Cancel As Boolean)
    
    On Error Resume Next
    ' Try to remove the iTrade command bar
    Call Application.CommandBars(COMMANDBAR_NAME).Delete
    
    ' Restore error handling
    On Error GoTo 0
End Sub

The custom event called OnDoSomething must be defined in a global Module. It doesn't work to define the method in the Workbook class. Insert a new Module and add the following code:

Option Explicit

Public Sub OnDoSomething()
    MsgBox "Hello World!"End Sub

You can change the button icon by specifying another FaceId value. To get a list of all available FaceIds on you computer, download and and install the FaceID Browser:

• FaceID Browser

Excel 2007 and later
To dynamically add buttons to the Ribbon you must use a combination of XML and VBA. For more information, please visit:

• How to: Use VBA to Add a Custom Command to the Ribbon 

Resources
Other usefull pages:

• Excel VBA: Adding items to the right-click menu

Excel VBA: Adding custom buttons to the Right-Click popup menu

In Microsoft Excel it is possible to extend the right click popup menu by using VBA. The right click menu is implemented as a special CommandBar (like the toolbars in Excel 2003) with the name "Cell".
Customs buttons are added before the popup menu is displayed. It is up to your self to make sure that any custom buttons are removed when they are no longer in use. Otherwise you would end up adding a new button every time the right menu is about to be displayed.

Option Explicit

' Constants
Private Const BUTTON_CAPTION As String = "My Button"


' Before Right Click
Private Sub Workbook_SheetBeforeRightClick(ByVal objSheet As Object, ByVal Target As Range, Cancel As Boolean)
    Dim objButton As CommandBarButton
    
    ' Remove the e-mail popup menu
    On Error Resume Next
    With Application.CommandBars("Cell")
        Call .Controls(BUTTON_CAPTION).Delete
    End With
    On Error GoTo 0
    
    ' Is the sheet1?
    If (objSheet Is Sheet1) Then
    
        ' Add the special button
        Set objButton = Application.CommandBars("Cell").Controls.Add(Type:=msoControlButton, Temporary:=True, Before:=1)
        
        ' Set the button properties
        With objButton
            .Style = msoButtonIconAndCaption
            .Caption = BUTTON_CAPTION
            .FaceId = 258
            .TooltipText = "Do Something"
            .OnAction = "'" & ThisWorkbook.Name & "'!OnDoSomething"
        End With
    End If
End Sub

Notice that the method SheetBeforeRightClick is overriden for the Workbook (ThisWorkbook) object, and not the worksheet, even though it is displayed on the worksheet. We are doing a check in the VBA code before the right click menu is displayed to ensure that it is only displayed for the worksheet named "Sheet1".

Please notice that all actions, i.e. OnAction events, must be stored in a public module. It is not possible to define the OnDoSomething method in the workbook or the worksheet classes. Add a new Module (Module1) and add the following code:

Option Explicit

Public Sub DoSomething()
    MsgBox "Hello World!"
End Sub

To specify an icon for the new button, a numeric value must be set for the FaceId property of the button. There is no built-in way of displaying all possible FaceIds. However, you can download and install the Excel add-in called Face ID Browser to display all possible button icons:

• FaceID Browser

 The final result will display the following custom menu item on the right click menu:

 

Resources

For more information on how to add buttons to CommandBars, please check out:

• Excel VBA: Add buttons to toolbars/ribbons

Excel VBA: String Format

The functions string.Format or StringBuilder.AppendFormat are two very usefull functions for formatting strings and increasing the readability of your .NET code. The Format function in VBA unfortunately works in a quite different way than the string.Format function in .NET. As far as I know there is no built-in function in VBA to acomplish the exact same as string.Format. In VBA the functionality can be achieved the following way:

' Format string using the .NET way
Public Function StringFormat(ByVal strValue As String, ParamArray arrParames() As Variant) As String
    Dim i As Integer

    ' Replace parameters  
    For i = LBound(arrParames()) To UBound(arrParames())
        strValue = Replace(strValue, "{" & CStr(i) & "}", CStr(arrParames(i)))
    Next
   
    ' Get the value    StringFormat = strValue
End Function

For more information please visit

• Using .NET String.Format in Excel

Excel VBA: Download files from the Internet

There is no built-in function in Microsoft Excel which allows you to download contents from the Internet on the fly. To accomplish this task we need to use the API for WinInet. The use and explanation of API in VBA is for advanced users which have prior experience from either Visual Basic 6.0 or .NET.

Pitfalls
It is very important that all open Internet connections are closed as soon as the task is completed. WinInet only allows 2 concurrent connections to a given host. If you forget to shut down the connection after use, you will experience timeouts and misleading error messages. Please refer to the following website for more information related to the maximum allowed concurrent web connections:

• Adjust maximum concurrent connections

Howto
The source code below should be pasted in a "Class Module" in Excel. If you are not sure how to open the VBA editor in Excel for your current Microsoft Office version, please refer to the following page:

• Display the developer toolbar or ribbon in Excel

Create new class module:

1. Open the Microsoft Visual Basic for Applications editor in Excel.
2. Select Insert -> Class Module on the main menubar
3. Rename the new class module to "WebClient"

Example
To use the code, you shold create a new instance of the class and any of the public methods:

• DownloadFile - download a specific resource to a local file
• UrlExists - check if a given URL exists

Dim objClient As New WebClient
Call objClient.DownloadFile("http://www.google.com", "c:\test.html")

Dependencies
The function "ReThrowError" is defined here:

• Re-throw Errors in VBA

Source Code

For the full source code, please visit

Excel VBA: Download files from the internet

Excel VBA: Re-throw error/exception

The current version of Microsoft Excel does not support the new Try/Catch blocks found in VB.net or any other modern programming languages. To handle errors within a procedure the "On Error Goto" statement must be used. When used, VBA expects the procedure to handle the error by either displaying a message visible to the user or just ignore it and continue as before.

However, if you are a Java or .NET developer you might want to restore the state of the application when a error is caught and then re-throw the error to let another part of the application handle it, just like when the "using" statement or throw/catch blocks are applied in C# code. There is no direct way of re-throwing a error in VBA, like throw or throw [Exception] in Java and .NET. The correct way of solving this challenge is to use the Err.Raise method, and specify all the existing error parameters in the following way:

Sub Test()
    On Error GoTo ErrorHandler
   
    ' Do Something   
    Exit Sub
ErrorHandler:
    ' Restore state

    ' Re-throw/Raise existing error   
    Err.Raise Err.Number, Err.Source, Err.Description, Err.HelpFile,    Err.HelpContext
End Sub

A custom method can be made to simplifying the re-throwing of errors:

' Rethrow
Public Sub ReThrowError(ByVal objError As ErrObject)
    ' Raise   
    Err.Raise objError.Number, objError.Source, objError.Description, objError.HelpFile, objError.HelpContext
End Sub

For more information, please visit

• Download files from the internet using Excel VBA.